Blood on the Bayou

by DJ Donaldson

  In thinking about the comfort David could have provided if he was nearby, she forgot all the times she had neglected to confide in him when he was available, her memory shaping him into a far more sympathetic person than he had ever been.

  A middle-aged couple in matching silver and white running outfits came up quickly from her left, passed behind her, and jogged off into the distance. As Kit watched them depart, she noticed that they even ran in unison, like a little jogging drill team.

  Mistakes. God how she hated making mistakes. It was competence that separated you from all the clucks in the world who were bumbling through life doing the best they could and coming up short, people who were tied to each other as surely as if they were handcuffed. And she preferred to pick her colleagues, thank you, not have them thrust upon her by her failures.

  She moped on the steps for another twenty minutes and then took a long stroll along the lake. Finally, figuring that she was going to have to do it sometime, she returned to the car and drove slowly to the office.

  When she got off the elevator, she stayed to the left of the hall so that Broussard couldn’t see her shadow through the frosted glass panel in his office door. She barely had slumped into the chair behind her desk and begun to doodle on a legal pad when a shadow fell on her own door. The knock was hesitant, the way you might announce your presence to a woman whose husband had just died.

  “It’s open,” Kit said.

  Of course… it was Broussard.

  “You heard?” he said, pausing halfway in.

  “That they didn’t get him? Yeah, I heard.”

  Broussard came in, pulled the extra chair over to the desk, and sat down. “Want to talk?”

  “Maybe not ever again.”

  “Do you know what ‘inside baseball’ is?” he asked.

  Kit shook her head warily. “No.”

  “It’s a philosophy in which you choke up on the bat with no intention of hittin’ anything more than a single or a double. It’s the way baseball was played before Babe Ruth came along.”

  Oh no, Kit thought. A Babe Ruth story. In their relatively short association, Kit had noticed that Broussard dispensed inspirational Babe Ruth stories only when someone had made a real doofus out of themselves.

  “The Babe was the first one to consistently grip the bat at the end. No singles for him, no bunts. He thought bigger than that. Every swing had thunder in it and every pitcher knew it. When he missed a pitch, he practically screwed himself into the ground. And he missed a lot of ’em. But nobody thought anything about it because of what he might do to the next one. You see, they respected his intent. They knew that the price for big results is sometimes big misses.”

  Kit got up and went to the window. She separated the blinds with her fingers. “I’ve been thinking about moving to Shreveport.”

  “I know.”

  Kit turned. “How?”

  “Couple lives together awhile, one of ’em takes a job in another city, short time later the other one goes for a visit—”

  “There’s a job there… editor of a psychology journal.”

  “You’d be good at it.”

  As Kit looked at the old pathologist, she longed for him to ask her to stay, give her some sign that he didn’t want her to leave. “I need advice.”

  Broussard took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Much fun as it is to meddle in other folks’ affairs, I’ve learned it’s an itch best left unscratched. But I will say that if you decide to go, you should be sure you’re goin’ toward somethin’ not avoidin’ somethin’.”

  Kit watched Broussard fish a lemon ball from the pocket of his lab coat and slip it into his mouth. His hand then went back for the one he usually offered her, which, of course, she never accepted, what with it sitting there naked in the palm of a hand that regularly handled the most awful things. Would it be so hard for him to say, “Kit, I realize you have to do what you think is best, but you should know that you’ve done a fine job here and you’re going to leave some pretty big shoes to fill.” Or maybe, “The place won’t be the same without you.” Something.

  Broussard brought his hand out of his pocket and extended it toward her. “Want one?”

  About to decline as usual, Kit saw instead of a naked lemon drop, two of them, individually wrapped in cellophane.

  “Got to thinkin’ you might not be too keen on eatin’ somethin’ somebody had his hands all over. So I got these for you.”

  Kit stared into the old rascal’s eyes for a few seconds and saw there what she’d been looking for. She took the lemon drops from his hand, unwrapped them, and put both of them in her mouth. “Thanks,” she said, the two candies clicking together.

  “If you put one in each cheek, that won’t happen,” Broussard said, getting up to leave. At the door, he paused and looked back. “And I’ve got more.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Broussard’s visit left Kit in a much better frame of mind, so much better that she began to think constructively about what had happened. Sure, the killer had taken the night off, but did that necessarily mean she was wrong about his trigger? Maybe he had figured out that the only people in the Quarter at night now were disguised cops. Or maybe he was ill. Kit paced her office, trying to think of other explanations. Suddenly, a name popped into her head, one that had been sitting on a remote mental siding while she pursued the weather angle.

  Thirty minutes later, after a brisk walk through the streets of the Quarter, which didn’t smell nearly as gamy as they usually did at this time of year, she stepped up to the old oak door guarding the entrance to Maison Toulouse and rang the bell. It brought a downy-cheeked young man in an ill-fitting tux who looked like more like a member of the cast in a high school play than the suave concierge he was trying to be.

  “May I help you?” he asked, remaining firmly planted in the doorway.

  Despite his youth, his diffident manner made Kit feel like an encyclopedia salesman. She identified herself and said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about someone that stayed here a week ago.”

  He might have been young, but he certainly had his offended look down pat. “I’m sorry, but we are not in the habit of discussing our guests with…” Kit thought he was going to say something that would really get her steamed, but he merely said, “… third parties.”

  Considering his age, Kit thought she’d try the tough approach. “Listen, junior, this ‘third party’ happens to be here on official police business. So you’d be well advised to cooperate.”

  “So arrest me,” he said in a taunting tone as he closed the door in her face. She pictured him on the other side with his tongue out and his thumbs in his ears.

  Unwilling to give up so easily, Kit went across the street to a small café, sat at a table next to the window, and ordered hot tea and a Danish. After what had happened last night, she certainly didn’t want to ask Gatlin to make the concierge talk to her. Better to just keep the whole idea to herself.

  The waitress brought her a small metal pot of hot water, a cup with a tea bag in it, and a Danish that looked so calorie laden and so devoid of fiber that she was ashamed to be sitting in the window with it. As she bobbed her tea bag in the hot water, a car pulled up to the curb in front of the café and a young man in a starched white porter’s jacket got out and went into the Maison Toulouse.

  A few minutes later, a man in white shorts and a Hawaiian shirt came out of the hotel followed by a heavy woman in green clam-diggers and a T-shirt that read, GIMME SOME CHOCOLATE AND NO ONE’LL GET HURT. Bringing up the rear, heavily laden with suitcases and garment bags, was the porter who had brought the car around.

  Wobbling under the load, the porter managed to get everything across the street, where he dumped it onto the pavement at the rear of the car. When the trunk was closed, the owner of the car slipped the porter his tip as surreptitiously as a CIA operative might pass a bit of microfilm. Kit slapped a five onto the table and hurried into the street.

  From the way the por
ter picked at the bill he’d been given, it had apparently been folded into a tight little packet. When he got it unwrapped, the expectant look on his face soured.

  “He stiff you?” Kit said.

  “Shoulda known he was a buck tipper,” the porter said. “You never get mor’n a buck from a guy don’t look at you at the big moment. An’ he folded it up so he’d be sure he was gone when I found out. Guess he ain’t plannin’ to come back. Or else he thinks ain’t nobody but him got a memory.”

  The porter had skin like melted chocolate and strong white teeth that didn’t quite touch their neighbors. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Kit said, “your memory. Do you remember a guest named Guidry… Henry Guidry? He stayed with you a few days last week.”

  The porter was nodding and smiling craftily. “I didn’t think you looked like a hooker. You a cop?” When he talked, his almond eyes grew wide and round.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean? You private?”

  “I’m a police consultant.”

  “So, police consultant, what’s this information worth to you?”

  Kit dug a five out of her wallet and put it in the porter’s outstretched hand.

  He made a face. “Lady, ain’t you tried to buy anything lately? You can’t get nothin’ for this.”

  She added another five and said, “Henry Guidry,” in case he’d forgotten the name.

  The porter’s eyes got round. “In case you ain’t noticed, I ain’t too far up the social ladder in there. Numbers is all I know the guests by. Mr. and Mrs. Six. Ms. Eight. What’s he look like?”

  “Big fellow. Deep-set eyes, heavy eyebrows, long face, saturnine expression.”

  The porter’s face twisted into a scowl and he raised his hands in a pleading gesture. “Heyyyy.”

  “Sorry, gloomy… a gloomy expression.”

  “Yeah, I remember him. Scary-lookin’ dude. Good tipper, though.”

  “How long did he stay with you?”

  The porter rolled his eyes in thought, then counted off some days on his fingers. “Three.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “When?”

  “Did he share his room with anyone?”

  “Hu uh.”

  “Why did you ask me when?”

  “’Cause he had somebody with him when he left.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “When somebody stays with us, we take their car and store it for ’em until they leave, ’less, a course, they need it, then we go and get it. ’Cause we ain’t got any parkin’ right here. It’s actually a convenience, so nobody gripes. But this guy did. Wouldn’t let me take his car. Said he’d find a place for it. Then the day he checked out, he got the car from wherever he put it and brought it around to the front door. Then when I took his bag out, I noticed somebody in the front seat, kinda slumped over like they was sleepin’ or maybe drunk.”

  “Could you tell what this person looked like?”

  “Nah. I never got around to that side.”

  “How were they dressed?”

  “Couldn’t tell. Sorta had a raincoat or somethin’ draped over him.”

  “So it was a man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks. You’ve been a real help.”

  As Kit walked away, the porter watched her for a few seconds, then called out, “You ever decide to start hookin’, look me up.”

  Kit was so busy thinking about what she’d learned that she barely heard what he said. There was someone in the car with Guidry when he left town. And the night she saw him around Jackson Square, he was looking for something or somebody. That’s why nothing happened last night. The killer’s gone… and Guidry knows where he is. Now what? How could she tell Broussard one of his best friends was involved. On the other hand, how could she not tell him?

  *

  Back at the hospital, Charlie Franks, the deputy medical examiner, had just come into Broussard’s office. “If you see shotcup petal abrasions around an entrance wound, how far was the gun muzzle from point of entry?” he asked.

  Broussard looked up from the monthly newsletter he wrote and sent around as an educational service to his counterparts in the less populated sections of the state. Franks was referring to the evenly spaced rectangular bruises produced by the plastic sleeve around the pellets in certain types of shotgun shells as the petals of the sleeve open after firing.

  “Thirty to ninety centimeters,” Broussard said, reciting the accepted litany on the question.

  Franks grinned and waved the journal in his hand. “Guess you haven’t seen the latest issue of JFS.” He went over and laid the open journal on top of Broussard’s papers. “This top picture is the pattern produced by a Baikal four-ten with full choke firing number seven and a half I.V.I. Imperials at a range of seven point five centimeters. See the petals?”

  Broussard leaned down for a close look at the path the shell had made as it penetrated the white Foamcore test material. “They’re not real clear, but they’re definitely present.”

  “Here”—Franks pointed at the second picture—“the distance was twenty centimeters.”

  “No question about ’em. So what’s the conclusion?”

  “Most every four-ten they tested and every kind of ammo showed petals at less than thirty centimeters, except for the Koon Snake Charmer. There it did take thirty centimeters.”

  “Course a Snake Charmer’s got a real short barrel.”

  “They weren’t sure if it was that or its cylinder bore.”

  “Wonder how come you got your copy before I got mine?”

  “Age before beauty,” Franks said.

  “I can live with that.”

  “Damn, I mean the other way around.”

  The phone rang. “You got the morgue this mornin’, right?” Broussard said, his hand poised over the phone. Franks nodded and turned to go. “And leave the article, will you?”

  Broussard picked up the phone and said his name into it. On the other end was Joe Epstein, owner of Epstein Imports, an antique gallery on Royal Street.

  “Listen,” Epstein said, “I got a real nice Severdonck in yesterday and I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Sheep?”

  “Seven of them and a couple a ducks. But it’s mostly sheep.”

  In addition to his long-held passions for good food, ’57 T-Birds, and his work, Broussard had recently added a fourth: nineteenth-century oil paintings featuring sheep. Though he was not conscious of it his attraction to this field was traceable in large part to his job, where his senses were daily assaulted with evidence of the transient nature of corporeal existence. The survival of a painting produced before he was born showed that genius, at least, lives on. As for subject, what better than a docile animal to serve as counterpoint to the brutality he saw in his own kind.

  Ordinarily, he would have waited until lunch to visit the gallery, but since there was something else tugging him toward the Quarter, he decided to go now.

  When Epstein saw Broussard come through the door, he began to rub his hands together like a praying mantis. “Hullo, hullo, Dr. Medical Examiner.” It was the way Epstein always addressed him. As usual, he was wearing a shiny gray pinstriped suit that left a good inch between the wrinkled collar of his shirt and the collar of his jacket. As far as Broussard knew, Epstein had never been to college, so it was anybody’s guess where he got the Phi Beta Kappa key he wore as a tie clasp.

  “So, what I described to you on the phone sounded pretty good, huh?” He was leaning so far forward that Broussard thought he might topple over.

  “Sounded worth a look,” Broussard replied in a disinterested tone.

  This was the way it always was with them, a ritual with definite steps and a proper rhythm, each partner knowing his part so well that they moved through it as smoothly as a professional dance team.

  “Listen,” Epstein said. “I heard a good one the other day.”

  Now the joke. Always a joke to start.<
br />
  “Rabbi goes to visit a friend who’s a Catholic priest…” He paused and cocked his head. “You Catholic?” He waved his hand in the air. “Ahhh, doesn’t matter, this is not bad. The priest has to hear confession, so he asks the rabbi to sit with him so they can talk between customers. Guy comes up to the window, says, ‘Father forgive me for I have sinned. I have committed adultery.’ Priest says, ‘How many times?’ Guy says, ‘Once.’ Priest says, ‘Say a Hail Mary for penance and sin no more.’ Few minutes later, another guy comes up, says, ‘Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have committed adultery.’ Priest says, ‘How many times?’ Guy says, ‘Twice.’ Priest says, ‘Say a Hail Mary for penance and sin no more.’ Now priest has to go to the bathroom. While he’s gone, another guy comes up, says, ‘Father forgive me for I have sinned; I have committed adultery.’ Rabbi figures he’ll fill in while the priest is gone. So he says, ‘How many times?’ Guy says, ‘Once.’ Rabbi says…” Epstein paused, his face a glassy sea, his eyes two sinking ships. “Rabbi says…”

  As usual he had forgotten the punch line.

  “He says… Epstein scratched his thinning hair. “Oh, what the hell, you didn’t come here for jokes; you came to see a painting. It’s back here,” he said, unhooking the gold braid that separated the small room at the front from the large gallery in the rear.

  The painting was magnificent, a jewel whose colors glowed through a soft patina that only time can produce. And there were sheep, five adults and two lambs, in a tight grouping slightly to the right of center.

  Broussard leaned in and scanned the dark grasses and shrubs in the foreground. “Is it signed?”

  Epstein pointed to the lower left corner. “Down here. And dated 1885. It’s quality, no question.”

  Broussard lifted the price tag and made a face for Epstein’s benefit. Of course he would buy it. He knew that from the moment he saw it and so did Epstein, but the ritual must be played out.